Children’s author writes sonnet to mark 75th anniversary of Anne Frank’s diary

Children’s author Michael Rosen has penned a special sonnet to mark 75 years since the publication of Anne Frank’s Diary.

It follows a central London event on Tuesday featuring a speech by actress Sarah Solemani, whose father is a retired Persian Jewish maths lecturer.

Addressing the audience, she said: “We are here today to wake up, and to encourage our families and communities and countries to wake up, and affirm that racism, antisemitism, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, anti-Muslim, anti-humanity in all its forms, is a sickness with a changing face. It is the need to purge the country of one kind of human being.”

Solemani said Anne Frank “wanted her writing to matter”, adding: “It does. She wanted to go on living after her death. She did. Her legacy is far more than the entries of her diary. It is the goodness in all of us who crave and cling to her words of hope, the handbook of hope.”

Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich, who was in Bergen-Belsen at the same time as the young diarist, said: “Anne Frank has captured the hearts and minds of all young people of her generation and beyond; 75 years after publication, her book still inspires. Her wisdom and ideas at such a tender age were truly amazing.”

Anne Frank Trust chief executive Tim Robertson said Anne’s diary was “a masterpiece that plays a unique global role in conveying the human impact of extreme antisemitism, especially to non-Jewish audiences”.